Character (arts)
A character (sometimes known as a fictional character) is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, television series, film, or video game). Baldick (2001, 37) and Childs and Fowler (2006, 23). See also "character, 10b" in Trumble and Stevenson (2003, 381): "A person portrayed in a novel, a drama, etc; a part played by an actor". The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made. Derived from the ancient Greek word χαρακτήρ, the English word dates from the Restoration,OED "character" sense 17.a citing, inter alia, Dryden's 1679 preface to Troilus and Cressida: "The chief character or Hero in a Tragedy ... ought in prudence to be such a man, who has so much more in him of Virtue than of Vice... If Creon had been the chief character in Œdipus..." although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749.Aston and Savona (1991, 34), quotation: From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed.Harrison (1998, 51-2) quotation: Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theatre or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person".Pavis (1998, 47). In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes. Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor. Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors or writers, has been called characterisation. A character who stands as a representative of a particular class or group of people is known as a type.Baldick (2001, 265). Types include both stock characters and those that are more fully individualised. The characters in Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (1891) and August Strindberg's Miss Julie (1888), for example, are representative of specific positions in the social relations of class and gender, such that the conflicts between the characters reveal ideological conflicts.Aston and Savona (1991, 35). The study of a character requires an analysis of its relations with all of the other characters in the work.Aston and Savona (1991, 41). The individual status of a character is defined through the network of oppositions (proairetic, pragmatic, linguistic, proxemic) that it forms with the other characters.Elam (2002, 133). The relation between characters and the action of the story shifts historically, often miming shifts in society and its ideas about human individuality, self-determination, and the social order.Childs and Fowler (2006, 23). Creation In fiction writing, authors create dynamic characters by many methods. Sometimes characters are conjured up from imagination; in other instances, they are created by amplifying the character trait of a real person into a new fictional creation. Types Round vs. flat In his book Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster defined two basic types of characters, their qualities, functions, and importance for the development of the novel: flat characters and round characters. Flat characters are two-dimensional, in that they are relatively uncomplicated. By contrast, round characters are complex figures with many different characteristics, that undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader. Mary Sues are characters mainly appearing in fan fiction. They are virtually devoid of flaws, and are therefore considered flat characters. Dynamic vs. static Dynamic characters are those that change over the course of the story, while static characters remain the same throughout. An example of a popular dynamic character in literature is Ebenezer Scrooge. Regular, recurring and guest characters In television, a regular, main or ongoing character is a character who appears in all or a majority of episodes, or in a significant chain of episodes of the series.The TV Writer's Workbook: A Creative Approach To Television Scripts p. 40 Regular characters may be both core and secondary ones. A recurring character or supporting character often and frequently appears from time to time during the series' run. Recurring characters often play major roles in more than one episode, sometimes being the main focus. A guest or minor character is one which acts only in a few episodes or scenes. Unlike regular characters, the guest ones do not need to be carefully incorporated into the storyline with all its ramifications: they create a piece of drama and then disappear without consequences to the narrative structure, unlike core characters, for which any significant conflict must be traced during a considerable time, which is often seen as an unjustified waste of resources.Greg M. Smith, Beautiful TV: The Art and Argument of Ally McBeal, p. 147 There may also be a continuing or recurring guest character.Smith, p. 151 Sometimes a guest character may gain popularity and turn into a regular one.David Kukoff, Vault Guide to Television Writing Careers, p. 62 Classical analysis In the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory, Poetics (c. 335 BCE), the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle deduces that character (ethos) is one of six qualitative parts of Athenian tragedy and one of the three objects that it represents (1450a12).Janko (1987, 8). Aristotle defines the six qualitative elements of tragedy as "plot, character, diction, reasoning, spectacle and song" (1450a10); the three objects are plot (mythos), character (ethos), and reasoning (dianoia). He understands character not to denote a fictional person, but the quality of the person acting in the story and reacting to its situations (1450a5).Janko (1987, 9, 84). He defines character as "that which reveals decision, of whatever sort" (1450b8). It is possible, therefore, to have stories that do not contain "characters" in Aristotle's sense of the word, since character necessarily involves making the ethical dispositions of those performing the action clear.Aristotle writes: "Again, without action a tragedy cannot exist, but without characters it may. For the tragedies of most recent poets lack character, and in general there are many such poets" (1450a24-25); see Janko (1987, 9, 86). If, in speeches, the speaker "decides or avoids nothing at all", then those speeches "do not have character" (1450b9—11).Janko (1987, 9). Aristotle argues for the primacy of plot (mythos) over character (ethos).Aston and Savona (1991, 34) and Janko (1987, 8). He writes: Aristotle suggests that works were distinguished in the first instance according to the nature of the person who created them: "the grander people represented fine actions, i.e. those of fine persons" by producing "hymns and praise-poems", while "ordinary people represented those of inferior ones" by "composing invectives" (1448b20—1449a5).Janko (1987, 5). This distinction, Aristotle argues, arises from two causes that are natural and common to all humans—the delight taken in experiencing representations and the way in which we learn through imitation (1448b4—19); see Janko (1987, 4—5). On this basis, a distinction between the individuals represented in tragedy and in comedy arose: tragedy, along with epic poetry, is "a representation of serious people" (1449b9—10), while comedy is "a representation of people who are rather inferior" (1449a32—33).Janko (1987, 6—7). Aristotle specifies that comedy does not represent all kinds of ugliness and vice, but only that which is laughable (1449a32—1449a37). In the Tractatus coislinianus (which may or may not be by Aristotle), Ancient Greek comedy is defined as involving three types of characters: the buffoon (bômolochus), the ironist (eirôn), and the imposter or boaster (alazôn).Carlson (1993, 23) and Janko (1987, 45, 170). All three are central to Aristophanes' "old comedy".Janko (1987, 170). By the time the Roman comic playwright Plautus wrote his plays two centuries later, the use of characters to define dramatic genres was well established.Carlson (1993, 22). His Amphitryon begins with a prologue in which Mercury claims that since the play contains kings and gods, it cannot be a comedy and must be a tragicomedy.Amphritruo, line 59. See also Notes References * Aston, Elaine, and George Savona. 1991. Theatre as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance. London and New York: Routledge. . * Baldick, Chris. 2001. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP. . * Burke, Kenneth. 1945. A Grammar of Motives. California edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. . * Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present. Expanded ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. . * Childs, Peter, and Roger Fowler. 2006. The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. London and New York: Routledge. . * Eco, Umberto. 2009. On the ontology of fictional characters: A semiotic approach. Sign Systems Studies 37(1/2): 82–98. * Elam, Keir. 2002. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. 2nd edition. New Accents Ser. London and New York: Routledge. . Originally published in 1980. * Goring, Rosemary, ed. 1994. Larousse Dictionary of Literary Characters. Edinburgh and New York: Larousse. . * Harrison, Martin. 1998. The Language of Theatre. London: Routledge. . * Hodgson, Terry. 1988. The Batsford Dictionary of Drama. London: Batsford. . * Janko, Richard, trans. 1987. Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and the Fragments of the On Poets. By Aristotle. Cambridge: Hackett. . * McGovern, Una, ed. 2004. Dictionary of Literary Characters. Edinburgh: Chambers. . * Pavis, Patrice. 1998. Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Trans. Christine Shantz. Toronto and Buffalo: U of Toronto P. . * Pringle, David. 1987. Imaginary People: A Who's Who of Modern Fictional Characters. London: Grafton. . * Rayner, Alice. 1994. To Act, To Do, To Perform: Drama and the Phenomenology of Action. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Ser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. . * Trumble, William R, and Angus Stevenson, ed. 2002. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP. .. * http://philpapers.org/rec/SAUPPO Paisley Livingston & Andrea Sauchelli, 'Philosophical Perspectives on Fictional Characters', New Literary History, 42, 2 (2011), pp. 337–60. Category:Drama Category:Fictional characters Category:Narratology